4:27 PM

A little about my commute

So, I wanted to do a little bit about my commute to school, and the area and stuff cause it's really cool! ;-) It starts off pretty easy--I usually take the subway from Isezaki (about a block away from where I live) to Sakuragi-cho, 2 stops later. Then comes the fun part! Leading from Sakuragi-cho station, over to the school area, is a people-mover, which apart from being lots of fun, is actually the quickest way to get there. Oh look, off to the left you can see the Pacifico Yokohama building, where IUC is! You can also see the amusement park, with the really cool ferris wheel that I will definitely ride at some point! The people mover leads to Landmark Tower/Queen's Mall, a whole area of super upscale shops, offices, and restaurants. I can't usually shop/eat there, but it's really fun to walk through! Lately, for some reason, there have also been hordes of elementary schoolers (literally, in groups of hundreds) that seem to have come on some sort of field trip or something. Although, I really have no idea what in the area they could possibly be field-tripping to. I mean, it's cool and all, but not exactly in the tourist sense. Here's a view of a bit of the mall. Once you exit the mall, there's just a short pedestrian bridge leading across the street: and voila! You're at Pacifico Yokohama, which is actually a huge complex of offices, a fancy hotel, and a convention center. And, of course, IUC! Oh, and here's a night view from Sakuragi-cho, where you can see the ferris wheel and all the buildings all lit up.

4:09 PM

Intro to IUC

"Finally," right?
I know, it's been a while since my last post, but things have been kind of hectic what with classes starting and everything. But now I'm ready to get going with it again, and I thought I'd start with a general overview of the placement and how things have been going so far.
Week 1
IUC takes placement really seriously, something that I definitely appreciate, especially for a longer program like this. The entire first week, in fact, was taken up by different placement tests. On Monday, we met for a brief (or not) orientation about the program in general, and then in the afternoon we each had individual Oral Proficiency Interviews, which were video-taped, and involved a short keigo role-play.
Tuesday morning (and by morning I mean 9:30am-1:30pm) was the written portion of the test. There were kanji, listening, reading, and grammar sections. The kanji portion, which came first, was one of the hardest tests I have ever taken--there were literally sections where I left 90% of the page blank. This was not good for inspiring confidence. Fortunately for me, the rest of the test went much easier, and I was relieved to hear that the kanji had been bad for pretty much everybody.
Due Wednesday was a 400-800 word take-home essay. The topic was to take a stereotype
of Japan or Japanese people, describe it, and talk about whether we thought it was correct.
Thursday was a free day.
And Friday was the individual evaluation sessions. In addition to the classroom teachers, IUC assigns each student an advisor who will meet with them weekly for the whole year, starting with the eval session. My advisor is Sato Ari sensei, who is also one of my classroom teachers. In the eval session, Sato-sensei gave me a sort of graph that outlined how I had done in each section of the placement tests, and compared it with the group average. Kanji was not so good (as I'd expected); reading, hearing, and writing were also a little below average (though not much); and I was happy to see that the interview and grammar sections were both at or a little above average. (~Go me!~) Sato-sensei also played the video of my oral interview (pretty awkward and embarrassing to watch, but...) and went over some of the main problems.
Week 2
So, starting from week 2 (this week) we were placed into morning classes, but they were お試しクラス, which is to say trial classes until the final placement was decided. People were switched around a bit for the first couple days, but by Wednesday afternoon the classes had been decided and we all bought textbooks.
Week 2 also featured the start of SKIP (Special Kanji Intensive Program). I'm not sure what makes it "special," but I can certainly see where the "intensive" comes from. It's basically the same as the daily Yale kanji quizzes except you do them on your own time, and the goal is that by the end of the 10 months we'll have learned all of the 常用漢字, i.e. the 2500 basic kanji you need to read any newspaper, and which all Japanese people have learned by the time they graduate high school. We, of course, are learning them all in 10 months, instead of 10 years. And, since the first 30 or so lists are "easy" kanji that we should have "already learned," the sensei recommended that we do 2 or 3 quizzes each day.

That's basically the deal for now. Afternoon classes start next week as well, so the work should start piling up pretty soon.
Oh, and here's a picture, kindly taken from the IUC website, of the Pacifico Yokohama building. I promise to take some of my own soon, and I'll do a few posts about Yokohama, my apartment, and the surrounding area. Cause, it's really cool!

11:45 PM

A new year

So, tomorrow, classes start up at IUC. Placement tests and everything...so maybe I'm a little nervous. But for anyone who's actually reading this blog, I'll fill you in on how it goes later.
Also, I've got a couple more catch-up posts to do (like my trip to Osaka!) which I will get to later, I promise.
じゃあ、またね!